Rhubarb Cheesecake Bars

After reading Lou @ RainbowChard going through the freezer last week, I thought I ought to do the same thing.  I am generally on top of things, but I am still terrible with labels ... I pulled a jar out thinking it might be stewed rhubarb which turned out to be a tomato sauce.

But I did find a bag of frozen rhubarb (dated July 2015).  It seems a good time to use it up since it should only be a few more months before fresh rhubarb is available.  I would usually just take some stewed rhubarb (or this ginger rhubarb jam) and lightly stir it into the cheesecake filling before baking it, but thought I'd actually top it with rhubarb this time around.

Roasted Rhubarb:

Spread 5-6 pieces of rhubarb (cut into 2" pieces) on a pan lined with parchment paper.  Sprinkle generously with sugar and bake at 400 degrees F for 20 minutes.

 Cheesecake Bar Base:

2/3 cup butter
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 cups flour

Cream butter and sugar together.  Stir in flour.  Press into 9x13" pan and bake at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes.

Cheesecake Bar Filling:

24 oz cream cheese
1 1/3 cup white sugar
3 eggs
1/4 cup sour cream
1 tsp vanilla

Cream together cream cheese and sugar.  Stir in beaten eggs.  Stir in sour cream and vanilla.  Pour over base.  Arrange the pieces of rhubarb over the top of the cheesecake.  Bake at 350 degrees F for 35 minutes or until filling has set.

Cheesecake Bars with Oreo Crumb Crust and topped with Strawberry Balsamic Jam

For a BBQ earlier this season, I offered to bring dessert (as I often do).  And I have become rather obsessed with the taste of strawberries roasted with balsamic vinegar recently.

First it was the free-form cheesecake with balsamic roasted strawberries trifle-style dessert.  Then I went with a balsamic roasted strawberry ice cream.

I actually made the jam first and was going to post the recipe ... then I realized it was very similar to these previous recipes and decided it wasn't worth it.   But then I decided to incorporate it into a simple cheesecake bar - perfect as a bring-along to a BBQ.  And maybe worthy of a post?

Ingredients:
Strawberry Balsamic Jam (see recipe below)
1 1/2 cups Oreo crumbs
1/4 cup butter, melted
2 bricks of cream cheese
2/3 cup white sugar
2 eggs
vanilla

In a 9x13 pan, combine the Oreo crumbs and melted butter.  Press to form a firm crust on the bottom surface.

In a large bowl, beat cream cheese with sugar until fluffy.  Mix in eggs and vanilla and stir to combine.  Pour over crust.  Shake pan to spread out the mixture and let it settle.

Bake at 325 degrees F until firm.   This should only take about 30 minutes as it is quite shallow.

Refrigerate at least 2-3 hours.  Cut into squares and serve with a spoonful of jam.

Strawberry Balsamic Jam



I love the combination of strawberries with balsamic vinegar and have used it in many desserts.  This makes a terrific jam for toast and is great mixed with yogurt and oatmeal.

Ingredients:
2 litre strawberries
3/8 cup balsamic vinegar
5 Tbsp sugar




Roast strawberries and balsamic in 400 degree F oven for 30 minutes.  Pour into a pot and cook until thickened (30-40 minutes).  Note:  I usually wait until the jam has cooked down before adding sugar - amount depends on sweetness of strawberries.

Pour into glass jars and store in refrigerator or stores well in freezer.

Pumpkin Cheesecake Pie with Ginger-Pecan Crust

 

Happy Thanksgiving, Canada!

I may have mentioned how much I love cheesecake ... hmm, once or twice, maybe.  When a friend invited me to celebrate Thanksgiving with her and other friends, she also asked me to bring dessert (I so love being asked to bring dessert!).  But she also suggested pumpkin cheesecake which I've made variations of in the past.  Of course I'll make pumpkin cheesecake pie for dessert!!

Rather than using a springform pan, I baked this in the traditional style of a pumpkin pie.  I had intended to make a crust from crushed gingersnaps, but they proved too difficult to find in my local stores.  So I bought some Peak Freans bran crunch cookies that were on sale and added fresh ginger and pecans to have something a bit more interesting than the regular graham cracker crust.


Crust:
Fresh ginger
1/2 cup pecans pieces
1 cup broken pieces of bran crunch cookies
1/4 cup melted butter






In a food processor, process about 1 Tbsp worth of fresh ginger.  Once it is minced, add pecans and process.  Then add the cookies.  Pour the crumbs into a 9 inch deep dish pie plate and pour the melted butter over.  Stir in butter then press the mixture on the bottom and up the sides of the pie plate.



Filling:
400 grams (about 1 1/2 packages) cream cheese
1 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs, beaten
3/4 cup fresh pumpkin, baked and pureed
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4  tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt

Cream together cream cheese and brown sugar.  Beat in the two eggs.  Add remaining ingredients and stir to combine.  Pour over crust.  Did I mention "deep dish" pie plate?   Yes, I did.  This is too much filling for a regular pie plate.  Cheesecake has a way of puffing up when cooking, then settling in during cooling (partly why it often has cracks on the top).  So it might overflow a regular pie plate.

Bake at 350 degrees F for about 45 minutes until set.  Chill for at least two hours before serving.  Garnish with half pecans (I had also wanted to garnish with pieces of candied ginger but I didn't have any).

Free-form Balsamic-Strawberry Cheesecake with Milk's "Liquid Cheesecake" Base

Have I mentioned already how much I love cheesecake?  Very much like lovers of raw cookie dough, I intentionally leave a few spoonfuls (spoons-full?) in the bowl of that delicious gooey batter.  When I first received the Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook as a gift, I was excited to check out recipes from a baker (Christina Tosi) that could impress David Chang the way Chang's Momofuku cuisine had impressed me (OK well, impressing David Chang is a much bigger deal than impressing me, but you know what I mean).  I did not realize I would discover someone whose love of cheesecake batter would not only rival mine, but actually gross me out a bit (you'll have to read for yourself about her childhood obsession with Jell-O No-Bake Cheesecake).

I am using Tosi's signature cheesecake recipe, "Liquid Cheesecake" to make my own informal version of a strawberry cheesecake.  I have left out the cornstarch and simplified the technique, but otherwise followed the recipe directly.   The liquid cheesecake is spooned over broken butter cookies and topped with balsamic-roasted strawberries (just add a Tbsp or two of balsamic vinegar with some strawberries and bake at 400 F for 30-40 minutes to add a deep, rich flavour to the berries).











If the cheesecake mixture is made ahead of time, it should be slightly re-warmed (microwave) before putting this together.  Crumble some butter cookies and put some at the bottom of the serving cup.  Add some of the cheesecake mixture, then top with balsamic-roasted strawberries and some additional butter cookie pieces.

Liquid Cheesecake Recipe


8 oz cream cheese
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 tsp kosher salt
2 Tbsp milk
1 egg



 


Cream the sugar with the cream cheese.  Whisk separately the egg, milk and salt.  Stream in the egg slurry and blend until mixture is smooth.

Pour cheesecake into a 6x6 inch baking pan lined with parchment paper, bake for 15 minutes at 300 degrees F.  Cheesecake should be firm-ish around the edges and loose in the middle.  If too jiggly, bake another 5 or 10.

According to Tosi, if the batter begins to rise more than a 1/4 inch or begins to brown, remove immediately from heat.  Cool completely.  The mixture should then be spreadable, smearable, or otherwise gooey for various uses.  Store in container for up to 1 week in fridge (if it lasts that long!).

Yummy!

Chocolate Cheesecake Berry Cupcakes (and a bit of rambling)

Another cool, rainy day in these parts.   As I was lazing around this morning, I saw my neighbour's dog (Miley the Beagle - he and his wife have a brood of teenage girls; I'm guessing it's a Miley Cyrus reference) run across my yard, followed soon after by my neighbour (let's call him Jay).  Miley comes over several times a day (when I'm at home, not sure what happens other times) and barks.  She just runs into the yard and barks.  I've never owned a dog, so I'm not really clear on the purpose of this.

Jay stopped by to explain that I'm new to her, and if I were properly introduced, perhaps she wouldn't be so excited as to always bark (well, it could also be Sugar Ray). We both ran around after her for a while, then he pulled his trick of getting in the truck - I guess she likes to go for rides, because she came back pretty quick.  He then walked her over, and for the first time in 5 months, she actually came right up to me.  Seems pretty sweet.  He also walked her to the window where Sugar Ray was staring just to get them used to each other.  Sugar Ray arched his back a bit, then gave a big yawn.  I guess he's not too worried.  I just hope the barking stops.

Tomorrow my friend moves into his new house after a long wait.   He is very busy as would anyone be when they are moving.  I thought I'd prepare a dessert that he can have on hand for the many visitors that will be coming by.  As usual, I checked out allrecipes.com and found this: Chocolate Surprise Cupcakes.

I halved the batter portion as I did not need 24 cupcakes; but I wanted it more cheesecake-y so not only kept the full amount, but actually increased it as I happened to have a bunch of cream cheese on hand.  I also used milk in the batter instead of water, eliminated the chocolate chips (I like chocolate, but enough is enough) and added a topping of berries. 

Chocolate Batter


In large bowl, combine:

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup sifted* unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda

 

* Sifting: I suggested sifting because cocoa is always clumpy.  Usually I just run a whisk through the dry ingredients or use my fingers to break up the clumps; no idea which is easier, but I always strive for the laziest method.  At least I don't have to clean the sifter this way!

Create a well in the dry mix, then add:

• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup milk (or water)
• 1Tbsp vinegar
• 1 tsp vanilla

Whisk mixture together; spread evenly into 12-15 paper-lined muffin tins.  This halved recipe should normally make 12, but I wanted more of the cheesecake portion in each, so I spread it out further.

Cheesecake Batter:

Here's another rambling: I have a lot of bowls! 

But surprisingly, many of them are too inconvenient for baking purposes; nice and fancy, but too heavy to be practical - like these gorgeous pottery bowls I bought years ago. 

Hence my use of a thrift-store purchased measuring cup for mixing this batter. 

Cream together 400 grams cream cheese and 3/4 cup sugar.  Stir in 1 beaten egg and 1/4 tsp salt.  Drop dollops of the cheesecake batter over chocolate batter.







Top with berries of your choice.

Bake at 350 degrees until a toothpick inserted into the chocolate portion comes out clean.  The original recipe called for 55 minutes, but likely due to the smaller measure of chocolate batter, it was well clean in only 40 minutes, so maybe even less would be sufficient.

Katish's Cheesecake with Happy Goat Vanilla Bean Caramel Sauce

Katish: Our Russian Cook is a novel written in 1947, but originally published as a series of articles in Gourmet magazine.   It's an OK novel but the best part is that every page or two contains a recipe that is somehow related to the story.  The very first recipe in the book is for Katish's Cheesecake and apparently it is one of the most requested recipes in the magazine's history.  Here is a scan of the recipe straight from the book:

 

Cheesecake is, without question, my favourite dessert.  But a lot of my friends and family don't feel the same way.  Many think it is too heavy and rich.  I have made so many cheesecakes in my life that I haven't required a recipe in some time. I often add sour cream or sometimes whipped cream to lighten it up a bit.  But this particular recipe provided me with a new technique that really helps to lighten up the cheesecake and creates an even creamier texture - rather than adding whole eggs, it uses the yolks early on, then the last step before baking is to fold in the whites that have been beaten to fluffy peaks.

I always strictly follow a recipe the first time through so I can honestly say this one works very well.  But tonight I made it in a square pan as I didn't have quite enough cream cheese as the recipe calls for (so adjusted the rest of the ingredients accordingly, including the use of two large duck eggs instead of the 4 chicken eggs called for in the recipe as that was all I had in the fridge).

It can definitely be eaten as is, or enhanced by various additions (individually or in combination): zest and juice of 1 lemon added to the batter for a subtle flavour, a drizzle of raspberry coulis when serving, chocolate shavings on top or maybe cocoa added to the batter, or my recent favourite which is swirling in my homemade stewed ginger rhubarb before baking. But I used my last jar of rhubarb before Christmas so ...

I have had a jar of Happy Goat Vanilla Bean Caramel Sauce in the fridge for a while.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Caramel Sauce made with Goat Milk!!  It is amazing!  I don't eat a ton of sweets, but during the winter, I got into the habit of eating this caramel sauce on graham crackers as a quick dessert in the evening. I figured it was time to use it up, so I warmed it just enough that I could dribble some over the crust (which I made with crushed Breton crackers instead of zwieback - I often use Ritz crackers as well).  Note: when cooking with caramel, it can harden depending on the recipe during cooking, so I deliberately did not cover the entire crust.  It came out nice and chewy on the bottom.

And a final dribble of the caramel on the top for extra flavour, to pretty it up a bit, and let's be honest - it also helps to hide those cracks that always seem to form in the top of a cheesecake no matter what method I have tried to avoid them.  I hope that my photography skills seriously improve as a result of this blog, because I know that I kind of suck at this.  So please bear with me.  I don't think this final picture quite does it justice, as it really did come out with a light fluffy texture, but still very much that traditional cheesecake taste!